Proving The Value Of Crowdfunding!

Proving The Value Of Crowdfunding, Soldsie Raises $425K And Hires One Of 72 Investors Via FundersClub

Online venture capital firm FundersClub is pioneering equity crowdfunding and today demonstrated the value of bringing on dozens of investors rather than a handful. E-commerce startup Soldsie just raised $425,000 from 72 investors through FundersClub, and ended up hiring one. New Chief Scientist Yun-Fang Juan, a founding engineer of Facebook’s ads team, discovered Soldsie thanks to FundersClub.

The JOBS Act that eases restrictions on equity crowdfunding hasn’t been finalized yet, but enough of it is in place to legalize FundersClub. The Y Combinator graduate launched in July to pick promising startups and helps them raise venture capital from the crowd through its online platform. Accredited investors (people who earn $200,000 a year or have a net worth over $1 million) can browse startups on FundersClub, research their businesses, and then invest as little as $1,000 in exchange for equity in the startup. All the legal paperwork and money transfer happens online.

We’ve written a few times about WikiTribune, the Jimmy Wales-founded for-profit news site that aims to merge the bottom-up authority structure of Wikipedia with the top-down authority structure of traditional journalism. Well, now it’s doubling down on the bottom-up part: laying off its staff of 13 paid journalists and handing the keys more completely to...

On June 30, a spam article was posted to WikiTribune, Jimmy Wales’ news startup that argued “news is broken and we can fix it.” “International Airport Escort service In Mumbai,” it read. “I Provide Good Quality Educated Profile At Very Low 100% Safe And Original. 100 % Satisfied Guaranteed (Age- 19-25) College Girls.” A contributor...

A majority of Americans may find “the news media” broadly to be untrustworthy. But they feel differently when asked about the news outlets they regularly read. That’s a gap Pactio wants to address. “There’s been lot of frustration that trust in news organizations, and institutions, is declining, and the root of that problem is that,...